Confessions of Dr. Tawhik Hamid And Relevance in Malaysia

I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.

After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being, to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.

I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward Non-Muslims.

We Muslims are the ones who need to change. Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.

We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called Jizia. We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the Mosques.

What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "Descendants of the pigs and monkeys".. Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?

I have been into churches and synagogues where they were praying for Muslims. While all the time we curse them, and teach our generations to call them infidels, and to hate them.

We immediately jump in a 'knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammed when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, we are proud with the story in our Islamic books, that he married a young girl seven years old (Aisha) when he was above 50 years old.

I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.

Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause. Till now our 'reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a Fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shariia law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.

Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the Hejab (Head Scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders.

It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts. We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East .

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-Free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have its nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel , women can not be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'Apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.. I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel .

It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world. On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel , its 'enemy'. If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.

We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind. Our religious leaders have to show a clear and very strong stand against polygamy, pedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religions, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.

Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion. The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: 'We Muslims have to Change'.

Tawfik Hamid

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I was reading this when I was pointed out to a posting by Haris over the problem where JAIS officials went to the Hindu crematorium in Templer Park to confiscate the body of a man who converted to a Hindu since 1990. It seems that they want to get the declaration from the Syariah Court to declare that the deceased is a Muslim and to be buried in Muslim rites, not in Hindu rites.

This is not the first string of confiscating bodies, in fact there are thousands of cases that were unreported in the press, excepts for a few notable ones.

The recent case of Indira Gandhi winning the custody of her youngest daughter from her husband converted to Islam is a very hard fought battle in the civil court. One more delay of the same thing means that it will indeed bring more frustration to those particularly if Syariah court is placed above secular civil laws. Of course such things will bring confusion in particular on which set of law to be used.

Common sense speaking, if Lina Joy wants to practice Christianity despite being born a Muslim, she is entitled so, since the Federal Constitution says so. But then like what Dr. Tawhik said, if you are a Malay (recognized as Muslim) and wish to do something that Lina does, you will get whacked everywhere by those who in the thinking of religion says you cannot do so. And so does the caution of to people who wish or must (by marriage) convert.

When Malaysia became independent, the first baselines of the constitution states that the nation will adopt a secular base laws, ala British law but with Islam as the official religion in this country. This is clearly defined out. It seems that we have already deviated from the original set of rules and regulations. We should see how India does things. Despite having multiple faiths practiced in the country, India uses secular law, British style so that everyone will be judge by a set of law on country level. This also explains why India is much successful than its neighbor Pakistan.

Reading that again, I recalled recently that GPMS and other Malay NGOs filed reports on Karpal Singh for something deemed seditious on questioning the Malay rights and so forth. Like Dr. Tawhik said, those guys like GPMS, Perkasa go knee-jerked when someone does that. And the APCO debacle also illustrates such case. We oppose violence against Palestine by condoning Israel but it has been revealed that people in power are in collusion with the Zionists themselves. Which means something is not right, and it is cakap tak serupa bikin.

There was a conversion forum that I went at the end of 2007 at the Bar Council where it got stopped by GPMS and Zul Nordin was there as well. And I remembered the crowd out there as well.

Indeed in the end, we have to change. Such acts and knee-jerked acts got to be stopped and the mindset has to be changed. Those things are very unacceptable and it violates not only human rights but the Federal Constitution as well. Sad to say that most of us are silent on this and unless swift action is taken, the constitution will forever be abused and bent to the will of the select few.